50 First Date Rapes

Have you seen”The Cobbler”? Well, you don’t need to. It was so bad, it actually pissed my whole family right off. Michael, Charlotte and I all sat around afterward and had a unified bitchfest. The consensus being, “WTF was that even supposed to be?” I think he was trying to do something substantive, maybe? But, the best response to it is to quote another Adam Sandler movie:

“Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” – from Billy Madison

So, needless to say, we’ve kinda soured on Sandler of late. Along with most of the the rest of America, we were not fans of “The Ridiculous Six.” Not because it wasn’t PC. Satire is satire. But, satire should be funny. That’s kind of how it works. The man has lost his way.

Oh, and then there was “Pixels”, a movie aimed directly at my people – those of us who grew up playing and loving arcade games. My review in five words: It sucked Donkey Kong balls.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved him in his “Happy Gilmore” phase. I am a twelve year old boy at heart. Ask anyone.

But, my fave Sandler film is “Fifty First Dates”. It has always seemed hopelessly romantic. The woman he loves wakes up every day not knowing who is, and he must win her heart over and over again.

The one true love of my life refers to it as “the date rape movie.”

He and I have discussed this movie, sometimes heatedly, on and off for ages. As you may have noticed from previous posts, when we get bored, we find something inconsequential and pick it apart. Usually over dinner.

This is how it all started. To the best of my recollection:

He asks me, “Are you watching the date rape movie again?”

I am actually watching the movie, so I pause it. Harumpf. “What are you even talking about? She falls in love with him every day. It is not rape.”

“He scams her into sex by studying her likes and dislikes.”

“We all scam each other into love and sex. That’s part of it. We all pretend we don’t fart or burp for the first six months of any relationship, and we are, without exception, full of hot air.”

“Why, from his perspective, would he even want a woman who cannot remember who he is? Isn’t that kinda twisted in and of itself? What can he get out of it besides sex?”

“He can love her for who she is.”

“But they can never grow together, and they can never have shared memories. And, she is never going to grow as a person. She is stunted at that same age. Again, why would he want a woman like that?”

“So, just because she has this very specific disability, she should be doomed to being alone? If he can overlook the fact that they can’t have little “in jokes” together, then it’s lucky he found her and you didn’t.”

I am irate… Leave Britney alone!!!

“Well, that means a lot to me. That we share memories and get the same references. The relationship is richer for it.”

He is such a suck up.

“Sure. I agree. I wouldn’t want to date someone even ten years younger than I am for that very same reason, but I don’t begrudge others that option. What if that same thing happened to me? Would you stop loving me?”

I think I have him here. But, as you’ll see, he’s wiley.

“Well, if he knew her before it happened and she had any kind of memory of him from before the accident, I would look at it differently. She wouldn’t be waking up with a complete stranger. She would have just lost some time with him. You’d know me. I’d just be grayer and more wrinkled. And, I’d still have all our years together.”

“But, that’s just bad timing. He loves her, and he is willing to do whatever it takes.”

I am a girl. Really, sometimes, I am such a girl.

“What about at the end of the movie? She has a kid with him. How was that pregnancy for her? A nightmare! At some point, she had to wake up nine months pregnant, not remembering that she’s pregnant. She can’t recall planning this child at all! She’d think it was an alien spawn until he explained it to her. How terrifying would that be???”

He makes such a good point here. But still, something about determining for her that she isn’t allowed to reproduce troubles me deeply.

“Once again, we are deciding for her that she can never have love and must also remain childless?”

“It’s just fucking creepy on his part. That he would even put her through that.”

And on that point, I must concede. The poor girl wakes up every day to Adam Sandler’s goofy face, and some kid she doesn’t know is spilling orange juice on her. That is unimaginable weirdness to deal with before you’ve even had coffee.

The way any of us get through the day has a lot to do with remembering the shitty circumstances that put us here. We acclimate to the crazy shit in our lives slowly over time…